Hi! Hi hi hello and stuff. It's been a maddeningly busy couple weeks around here, work wise. And completely, utterly boring otherise. Ezra's tooth fell out. We took the Christmas tree down. I am still finding cat hair on my mascara wand. 

Oh, and I took Ike to get his first "real" haircut. A hairzcut, if you will. Six months of half-assed home haircuts (plus the complete absence of any forgiving, curl-inducing humidity) had left him pretty shaggy looking, and it was officially time to take him to see someone who actually knows how to cut hair in a semi-straight line. 

(The official "Before" portrait.)

Aaaannnnd the "During."

Ike is pretty attached to his hair. I've asked him if he'd like short hair — really, I have! — and he's been adamant that he likes it long. He's told me that no, he doesn't want it cut like his brothers' hair, but then again, HE'S THREE AND A HALF, so I can think of at least a dozen things he said "no" to just this morning.

(Milk in a cup, milk not in a cup, a shirt with a zipper, a different shirt with no zipper, underwear, eggs, a non-dark-blue plate, non-green socks, shoes, carrying his own lunchbox, walking on the sidewalk, doing anything that would make our morning even slightly easier, etc.)

But man, he was NOT happy about this haircut business, even after I tried to assure him we weren't cutting off that much. This was a betrayal, and it was UPSETTING. 

"MY HAIR!" he wailed, pretty much the entire time. "MY HAAAIIIIIRRRR!" 

He calmed down eventually — thank goodness for kiddie hair salons and their ability to cut hair in under five minutes, even in the face of a wriggling, crying client. And once his hair was dry and professionally tousled, and he realized we hadn't completely cut away the source of his power.

"I still look regular," he observed, somewhat tearfully. "I still look like Ike."

Later at home, I caught him quietly contemplating a bald baby doll. I asked him what he was thinking about.

"I not a baby anymore. I don't wear diapers and I get my hair cut. I a kid now. "

So there you have it. Diapers and haircuts: The official markers of the End of Babyhood.